There’s a new FB page for Eco Boy vs. Yoga Girl. Chapters will be released there first. ~ WL.

~

VIP Cheese Cubes and Sex Standing Up.

The Continuing Adventures of Eco Boy vs. Yoga Girl.

“Sexual intercourse is something of the moon—lovers are looney, crazy but not crazy, beset by magic…keep your compass, sailors, or you’ll find yourself lost upon dark ocean waves.” ~ Dr. Willard Evans

Eco Boy facebooked her and gave her his cell #, saying
“Text is best.”

And she texted him and he texted her back and he invited her to the schwanky event in Denton, 30 miles away. He didn’t own a car…of course…which was somewhat awkward when it came to first dates,. He texted her and told her to wear something

“nice but…tomboyish” so he could pick her up on his bike, “if that was alright.” He had pegs.

And two days later there he was, wearing an entirely too-casual-for-a-VIP-party vintage electric blue tee shirt on the verge of falling apart, and his hair was newly Don Drapered: you know: strong part, too much product, short on the sides, neat as f*ck. And he biked up and kicked the kickstand down.

And he rang her bell and waited. Someone’s gray cat, too fat, waited with him. He pet the cat, and looked up at the night sky, breathing deep and forcing himself to relax. And the brass apartment numbers shone dully in the early evening light. And Yoga Girl, her hair shining whitegold beneath the cold porchlight, came down from her apartment wearing a strawberry-red tomboys’ summer dress, with pockets. And they hugged, politely, and chatted about bullshit and she hopped on his bicycle and he got on in front of her and pushed off, she hugging his hips. And he pedaled off to the smelly bus station.

There they waited for a bit, talking lightly yet awkwardly, boarded the $8 buck 6:40 BD-X bus, and sat together. They talked about whatever, he sneaking glances at her pale shoulders and her dress and her Daisy Buchanan beauty, imagining at one point how the crinkles of her young smile would look when she was a beautiful old lady with white hair. He hoped she wouldn’t cut it too short.

And he couldn’t believe he was (probably) gonna get to have sex with this beautiful girl (again).

~

A study had just come out showing what we’ve all known for years: that men get dumber around women.

Once in awhile, when she wasn’t looking, he’d half shake his head, like a horse beset by flies, shaking the dullness off his girl-addled brain. It was hard to be around beauty and be charming, at the same time.

They got to the VIP party. This was work, really, for him—he’d been invited as one of, say, 50 movers-shakers, that this new organization wanted involved in their new community enterprise. He hated things like this. Everyone had put their stupid JC Penney jacket on and there were 50 guys and only 10 women, a typically sexist hoity-toity business event ratio. Two of the women were staffers, so that made only eight entrepreneur women. “I’m mean I don’t care about fucking quotas but this is crazy,” he whispered to Yoga Girl. She ignored him.

Everyone stood around and bragged about how cool they were and handed business cards to each other. “Weak. What we need,” he joked to Yoga Girl, “isn’t another VIP club for rich idiots to feel special about themselves—what they need is a social skills class 101.” She didn’t really smile back, so he continued ranting to himself, silently.

First of all, don’t stand in a big circle and “open it up” for discussion. There went 45 interminable, unrewarding minutes of his life he’d never win back. Useless Rich Girl talked about how she had so much money but had spent the last six months wondering how to “contribute.” Well, he’d spent the last six months effing counting change and eating day-old muffins and not being able to afford health insurance and barely paying his effing mortgage, how’d you like dem apples? Useless Rich Girl sounded as if her worldview was of her fabulous yet somehow modest self in a castle and “the people” as a bunch of serfs, “out there,” in need of her generosity.

Well, the serfs have all the fucking fun, he thought. Standing in the big circle, toward the back so he could kneel (standing is tiring), he kept muttering insults, ’til Yoga Girl had to ask him to shush. Being rich herself, she was more used to this Mutual Flattery Society action, and more patient.

So they watched folks brag about themselves. Eco Boy was plenty egotistical, but well enough secure about his own self and future great success that he felt little need to try and impress a room full of insecure conventional square thinking old souls.

Finally, the blabbing was over and he left Yoga Girl and talked with the three or four people he liked and respected and looked up to. He then headed over to the food table and ate all the free food he could handle. Olives and baked tortilla or something with beet dip and sweet potato dip and more olives, mostly. He didn’t drink. He didn’t like to drink much, anymore—it made him dumb. At home, when he was off duty, reading something in the bath…he liked his scotch.

Finally, the VIP event was over. He found Yoga Girl talking with a bald rich man, and said “excuse me, let me grab her for a second?” and pulled her away, never to return. “You mind heading back to Boulton?”

It was getting cool, so he put on his old polyester cowboy shirt. And they took the first bus they could and she leaned her head on his shoulder, which was both sweet and terrifying. Half an hour later, seeing the random ugly boring old bus stops out the window, they pulled the cord and got off near Boulton’s big beautiful college campus on a hill, and went to his favorite farm-to-table restaurant. She ordered a glass of something or other wine. He ordered some tea, making fun of himself as he did so. He asked for honey, too—his voice hurt from talking too loudly at the VIP party, and the other five networking events he’d been to over the past week. And she leaned back, her breasts apparent in her elegant dress, and the lights outside sparkled and they talked about who-cares-what. The conversation flowed.

At some point, knowing it was time, he said what she was waiting for him to say—something about how if she wanted to stop by they could check out a bit of that movie that’d come up in conversation.

And they biked over to his house, his happy heart metronoming the time.

~

And they walked upstairs, and without a word started kissing.

She leaned against the white door to the bathroom. And he lifted her dress halfway up, his hands on her hips and the small of her back. And he lifted the dress all the way off of her, after a bit, dropping it to the hardwood floor. She took off his shirt—yet another old cowboy shirt, she just popping the buttons—she fumbled with his belt, he took over and helped. He fumbled with her bra clasp—you’d think after 36 years…but every time, with a inward grin, he remembered that wonderfully panicked feeling of being 12 and being defeated by that first bra.

He kissed her neck, and her mouth, and put his open hand gently on her cheek and in her straw-colored hair and kissed her closed eyes, and her little nose, and she did her part…and they went through the motions happy lovers go through.

And he took off her white Am Appy socks and her who-cares-what-color-it-was-overpriced underwear, and she took off the rest of his clothes—his Am Appy socks went last, good look.

And he lifted her up, her legs folding around him, and set her down upon him, and they made love, if you can call it that—standing, against the door. And then she ran to the bed, and laid chest-down, and he lit two beeswax candles and looked at the cold moon out the window for a moment…and he put a Sir Richard’s on—the official condom of eco boys and yoga girls everywhere—and they got back to it, and four moves later, and nine minutes and one lifetime later, he was numb and empty, weak, sweating that salt coast sweat that comes from good clean sex.

And she curled around him and the cool moonlight curled around her and the two laid there, candles flickering in the dark forest, in love.